Simon Wilkinson reviews Charlick’s restaurant in Adelaide’s East End
AN optimistic young team has revamped an landmark city pub and its eye-catching dining room with mixed results.
What is it with The Stag? While its near-neighbours in Rundle St East, The Austral and The Exeter, have thrived through changes of ownership, fashion and generations, the hotel at the end of the road has never found a way to attract its own loyal tribe.
In recent memory it has taken several owners to the cleaners, the latest a group of well-credentialled business types who attempted to turn it into a clubhouse.
Now the challenge has been passed on to a younger crew who have a different world view. Oliver Brown and Joshua Talbot have already shown they know how to attract a crowd at NOLA, the beer-and-whiskey-worshipping bar next door.
At The Stag, they’ve got rid of the bling and divided the space into a series of nooks, opening their arms to all and sundry, whether they want to play pool, watch the footy or settle into a session with their mates. Paul Kelly is playing, the schnitzels are sizzling and the welcome is genuine.
Then there is Charlick’s, the restaurant that is part of the pub footprint, run by the same blokes, but comes across as the polar opposite in mood and intent.
Moving from one to the other feels like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. Or perhaps passing into the lower oesophagus given the dusky pink walls and ceilings that seem to close in around us as we settle into a liver brown padded booth.
The inspiration, I guess, is sunsets and red dust, but the room becomes quite gloomy at night. With only a couple of other tables for company and a fairly dire jazz soundtrack, the eating and drinking side of things has plenty to do.
Chef Blake Drinkwater comes to Charlick’s with a gold-standard resume including stints at Orana a few doors away, Melbourne’s Attica and Noma in Copenhagen.
No surprise then to find plenty of foraged ingredients, smoke and pickling – particularly pickling. Even an introductory gin cocktail is made with brine from a rose petal pickle, giving it a delicate blush.
All that acid can become overwhelming. Old mate kingfish, for instance, is cured to the point that its god-given qualities are masked by an assertive tang, while pickled radish and blood lime flesh push the balance further in the wrong direction.
Much better is a mix of early-season tomatoes in various shapes and colours, roasted to intensify and caramelise into little flavour bombs, sitting alongside an equal measure of labneh with a faint smokiness. Cucumber juice, poured over at the table, adds a cool, clean splash.
A dish usually featuring pork jowl is turned vegetarian on request, with ribbons of lightly grilled pumpkin in place of the pig, red cabbage wedges left on the coals to char and crisp the outer leaves, blobs of a smoked beetroot gel and pretty little red sorrel leaves. Texture, interplay of flavours – the combination has it all.
Earlier menus featured trumpeter but that has given way to fillets of King George whiting, fried hard so the skin has crisped but meat dried out more than is ideal. Below is a subtly sweet puree of corn, to the side a layer of onion, singed lightly on the rim, and on top a robust salad of parsley, capers and preserved lemon that dominates.
Two frenched cutlets from a lamb rack are in wonderful nick, the meat quite rare but well rested, the seam of fat too good to leave behind. With a well handled reduction, peas and broad beans it’s a perfect spring tribute – other than the weird addition of pickled cucumber that begs the question “why?”.
For that matter, why would you go to the effort of making exemplary pastry layers and custard for a mille-feuille and fill it with raspberries long before they are in season here, so the fruit offers little more than a one-dimensional tartness and a few pips to wedge between the teeth?
Everything about Charlick’s – the look, the cooking, the mood – feels as if it’s trying hard to make an impression. Give them a few months, I think, to sit back and reflect. I know a good pub where they can do that.
And the score is:
CHARLICK’S
30 Vardon Ave, Adelaide
0434 812 023, charlicks.com
OWNERS Oliver Brown and Joshua Talbot
CHEF Blake Drinkwater
FOOD Contemporary
SMALLER $15-$22 LARGER $25-$36
DESSERT $14-$16
DRINK A list of small local labels with a smattering from elsewhere in the world, all at reasonable mark-ups.
Open for DINNER Wednesday-Sunday
BOTTOM LINE: 7/10